"Men were weighing for thousands of years before Archimedes
worked out the laws of equilibrium; they must have had practical and
intuitional knowledge of the principles involved. What Archimedes did was to
sort out the theoretical implications of this practical knowledge and present
the resulting body of knowledge as a logically coherent system."

and again:

"With astonishment we find ourselves on the threshold of modern science.
Nor should it be supposed that by some trick of translation the extracts have
been given an air of modernity. Far from it. The vocabulary of these writings
and their style are the source from which our own vocabulary and style have
been derived."[1]

Pre-Socratic philosophy

The presocratics were primarily ontologists who
rejected mythological explanations for reasoned discourse. Parmenides, for example, gave one of the first
documented logical arguments: How could what is perish? How could it have come
to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to
be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown. Heraclitus,
in contrast to Parmenides immutable one, asserted that the only thing that
doesn’t change and perish is change itself. As can be seen, then, the
presocratics were concerned with what exists, where it comes from, what it
comes from, how it exists and how the plurality of natural objects can be
explained.

Classic Greek philosophy

Socrates

Socrates, an Athenian philosopher, believed that a person should
always try to do well. He believed that one should "know thyself." This is
evidenced by disobeying a bad command. He made his most important contribution
to Western thought through his method of inquiry. In addition, he also taught
many famous Greek philosophers. His most famous pupil was Plato. However, since
Socrates discussed ideas that upset many people (some in high positions), he
was given a choice to be banished from Athens, or to be sentenced to death by
drinking a poison, hemlock (Conium maculatum). He was given a cup of hemlock by
a guard. He chose to drink the poison, perhaps because he could not stand the
thought of being banished from his home. The ironic thing about this is that
during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants he was often threatened, but survived
despite his continued protests for democracy. When democracy came, he was
executed for corrupting their young children. Most of what we know about
Socrates came from Plato as Socrates wrote nothing down.

Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle, Aristoteles in Latin and many other languages (but
Aristote in French and Aristotele in Italian), (384 BC - 322 BC) has, along
with Plato,
the reputation of one of the most influential philosophers in Western thought.
Their works, although connected in many fundamental ways, differ considerably
in both style and substance. Plato wrote several dozen philosophical
dialogues—arguments in the form of conversations, usually with Socrates as a
participant—and a few letters. Though the early dialogues deal mainly with
methods of acquiring knowledge, and most of the last ones with justice and
practical ethics, his most famous works expressed a synoptic view of ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge,
and human life. Predominant ideas include the notion that knowledge
gained through the senses always remains confused and impure, and that the
contemplative soul that turns away from the world can acquire "true" knowledge.
The soul alone can have knowledge of the Forms, the real essences of
things, of which the world we see is but an imperfect copy. Such knowledge has
ethical as well as scientific import. One can view Plato, with qualification,
as an idealist and a rationalist.

Aristotle was one of Plato's students, but placed much more value on knowledge
gained from the senses, and would correspondingly better earn the modern label
of empiricist. Thus Aristotle set the stage for what would
eventually develop into the scientific method centuries later. The works of
Aristotle that still exist today appear in treatise form, mostly unpublished by
their author. The most important include Physics, Metaphysics, (Nicomachean) Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the
Soul), Poetics, and many others.

Aristotle was a great thinker and philosopher, and was called 'the Master'
by Avicenna in the following centuries and 'the Philosopher' by others, since
his philosophy was crucial in governing intellectual thought in the Western
world. His views and approaches dominated early Western science for almost 2000
years. As well as philosophy, Aristotle was a formidable inventor, and is
credited with many significant inventions and observations.

Transmission of Greek philosophy under Islam

During the Middle Ages, Greek ideas were largely forgotten in Western
Europe. With the fall of Rome, very few people in the West were left who knew
how to read Greek. Many Islamic rulers gathered the manuscripts and hired
translators to increase their prestige. Islamic philosophers such as Al-Kindi,
Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes
reinterpreted Greek philosophies in the context of their religion. Their
interpretations were later transmitted to the Europeans in the High Middle Ages, when Greek philosophies re-entered the
West through translations from Arabic to Latin. The re-introduction of these
philosophies, combined with the new Arabic commentaries, had a great influence
on philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas.

Notes

^ Greek Science, many
editions, such as the paperback by Penguin Books. Copyrights in 1944, 1949,
1953, 1961, 1963. The first quote above comes from Part 1, Chapter 1; the
second, from Part 2, Chapter 4.